The Issue with Discipline Raid Healing

As Priests, we exist in two healing realms: Holy and Discipline. Discipline and Holy. I say that because one is not superior or inferior to its counterpart. Each specialization has its own tree. Each has its strengths and weaknesses.

We were told way back before Wrath of the Lich King that these two trees were going to serve different fundamental purposes: Tank-Healing or Raid-Healing. Seems simple enough, right? Once Discipline Priests got past the backlash of “Disc is PvP lol” malarkey, people started learning that Discipline Priests can actually function as Tank healers. If all of our tools are used in concert with each other, we can be a damn good single-target healer.

Is Discipline, though, viable as a Raid-Healing spec? That’s debatable.

As with most aspects of this game, everything is going to be viable as something other than it was intended, depending on the situation. For Discipline, Loatheb is an awesome example. Although our talents are angled towards single-target healing, a combination of PW:S, Prayer of Healing, Penance, and quick Flash Heals (all powered by Fungal Creep) make us a formidable Raid Healer in a short amount of time.

Another example is Deathbringer Saurfang, the last boss in the first wing of Icecrown Citadel. It seems widely accepted now that a Discipline Priest shielding the raid helps reduce the amount of Blood Power that Saurfang gets via Blood Link. The sooner Saurfang’s energy reaches 100, the sooner a Mark of the Fallen Champion gets put on a random raid member. Absorbs from PW:S, as well as Divine Aegis, reduce the amount of Blood Power he receives. Thus, fewer Marks on the raid, which means you can obtain I’ve Gone and Made a Mess with ease. Not to mention, you get the boss down faster and easier.

Beyond the Situational Awesomeness

I’ve seen a trend of Discipline Priests insisting that they only raid heal. They seem to hate the idea of being locked onto one or two tanks and will choose to “bubble spam” the raid. An occasional spell other than PW:S might be used, but it tends to be a one-button spam from players like this.

I have no problem with people trying something different or off the beaten path, just so long as they’re smart about it and demonstrate a mastery of their choice. I’m sorry to say, but playing Whack-a-Mole with Weakened Soul hardly shows mastery. In cases like Saurfang, it’s a conscious and strategic choice. In other cases, it’s a waste of mana.

Power Word: Shield / Rapture – Through Borrowed Time, we’ve received a nice scaling talent as a Discipline Priest. It’s a valuable spell to the Discipline Priest, but it’s not the only spell we have available. Since Rapture returns mana to you (ideally equal to or greater than the cost of PW:S), it increases your longevity as a healer, making PW:S one of the front-runners in our arsenal. Notice, though, that Rapture only triggers when a shield is “completely absorbed or dispelled.” Yes, partial absorbs are better than no absorbs at all. However, in quite a few cases, the raid won’t take damage for a while. Any shields that are put up on raid members that aren’t even touched is a total sacrifice of that mana. Let’s say your PW:S costs 666 mana (yes, mine does). If you cast it consistently, and 10 of them don’t even get touched, you just threw away 6,660 mana. How much damage did you prevent? Zero. If you’re casting PW:S consistently, Renewed Hope will be up the whole time. Since it doesn’t stack, those 10 shields mitigated no extra damage.

Grace – This fun talent, at the start of WotLK, used to be allowed on more than one target at a time. Once Blizzard thought that was a little bit overpowered and was steering Discipline away from it’s original intent, they restricted Grace to one target at a time. As a single-target healer, Grace is a great tool to have (though I wish it could be on up to three targets for fights like Marrowgar and Goremaw). As a raid healer, it’s a wasted three talent points. I find it particularly hard to assist with raid healing without using either Flash Heal or Penance (or the occasional hasted Greater Heal – all three of which activate Grace). In most cases, you’ll be snipe-healing multiple targets. If not, you’ll use a couple heals to top someone off, then off to the next target. Grace isn’t given the chance to shine.

Where To Go From Here

Spec – I currently rock out a 57/14/0 spec. I’ve tried various versions of it, but this spec just seems to work really well with the way I play. I like to use Renew to help pad the tanks, or throw some on the raid to help out.

Given what I wrote above about Grace, I would choose to sacrifice those points and put them elsewhere. I threw together a 52/19/0 spec if I were to try to re-work myself into a raid-healing Discipline mode. I also took the points out of Focused Will (sacrifice some crit) and switched Spell Warding to Divine Fury. I topped out Divine Fury (taking one point from Inspiration), and grabbed all three points of Improved Healing. The goal is to hopefully rotate Greater Heal more into your rotation and make it (and Penance) cheaper to cast. You still get powerful shields and good utility, but it’s not the end of the world trying to keep Grace up.

Spells – As I pointed out above, I’m not a big fan of the “bubble spam”. Sure it may look good on World of Logs or the estimated “absorption meter”, but I think it’s impractical. I’m not in a raid to top a meter, I’m there to keep the whole raid alive. With the alternate spec I suggested above, sniping Flash Heals and Penances is a great way to keep the raid up, as long as you’re also utilizing Prayer of Mending, Renew, and Prayer of Healing as well.

If you choose to keep a variation of the first spec, then keep in mind the benefit of keeping Grace on your primary target. You’re not going to be the most amazing raid healer, but you can certainly help out:

Prayer of Mending – I always keep this bouncing. There are addons available to let you know when your charges have run out. I tend to cast mine whenever it’s up.

Renew – If you put the points into Improved Renew, you can help out the other raid healers with this one.

Prayer of Healing – Although a bit of a mana drain, it’s amazing when it crits and each member gets his/her own Divine Aegis shield.

Binding Heal – ?!?!?! you say? I use this spell when I just need to single target someone. Yes, it heals me at the same time. Higher mana cost, the self-heal may be worth it, and I can keep the Grace stack on the tank. I’ve tried both ways, and using Binding Heal has seemed worth it to me.

So there you have it! I’ve always felt that Priests are incredibly versatile healers. I don’t enjoy one-button spams or anything proved to be “easy-mode casting”. We have an amazing arsenal of spells available, and using all of them can make us unstoppable. There’s no reason you can’t take the intricacies of our class and harness them to do what you need them to.

My point is that if you’re going to go off the beaten path, think about what you’re doing before you take that step.

How do you feel about Discipline raid healing? What other tricks have you figured out over time?

Comments

The Faction Champions encounter in ToC, especially the heroic one is a real fun as disc. PW:S to save lives, Pain Suppression, Fear, Fear Ward, dispells, a “living” and constantly changing Grid, i just love it.

Anyway, I think a disc priest is a bit of a musthave for every raid. PW:S + hasted Penance + GH is just an insane output in 4 sec if you have the right amount of crit/haste, not to mention the remaining aegis after that combo.

Back in the Ulduar days I used to raid-heal as Disc along with a really top-notch Holy Paladin, and it worked really well. I got to weave bubbles, high-throughput Pen+GH bursts and reactive Flash spot-heals together in a really dynamic way, and that really got me a deep understanding of the interactions within the Discipline spellbook.

The only time I resort to bubble-spamming is heroic 25-man Twins, simply because when paired with a good Resto Druid the combination of buying time and healing over time provides good synergy and by coincidence maximal heal+absorb output for me.

Perhaps it’s just my playstyle but I’ve really never seen Disc as simply a “tank healer”. In fact, when standing next to a Holy Paladin I feel acutely like I’m missing a lot of sustained single-target oomph, for example on fights like Algalon. Rather I tend to see Disc as a “support healer” along with the Druids. Leave the tanks to the Paladins and the raid to the Holy Priests and Resto Shamans, and let me float and use my tools where they’re most needed.

I have played Holy for most of my healing days and didn’t really care to check out Disc. My second spec was Shadow. With the Saurfang fight, Disc is obviously supperior to Holy so I dumped my Shadow spec for Disc. Lo an behold, Disc has grown on me and now I play as Disc more than Holy.

I am usually assigned to Tank healing in both 25 mans and 10 mans. I keep PoM going on the tank with every CD, PW:S when the debuff is off and then FH. There are sometimes when I have to just concetrate on the tank or tanks but for the most part I have time to throw some PW:S’s on anyone taking damage.

In the Marrogar fight I can throw a PW:S on anyone in range during Blade Storm. PW:S seems a little better than a Renew in that situation. In the Lady Deathwhisper fight I can heal the tank and still throw bubles on a raider or two incoming damage. Specifically, I see the aggro on a raid member and cast PW:S before Lady Deathwhisper’s shadow bolt. The Ship encounter is easy in any spec. And then Saurfang.

You leave out Holy Nova. If the raid is stacked the throughput of this spell is amazing – plus it spams everyone with Divine Aegis as well. I tend to carry some Holy Nova glyphs around with me for specific fights when the raid will stacked or almost stacked.

I would point out one annoying failing of Disc priests – the pally tank. You can’t shield pally tanks all the time because they run out of mana. Have to let them take some damage and heal them up often.

I see Disc as the ultimate support role…which just happens to be my favorite role to play. I am happiest in a raid when I can have a single tank as my focus and help out on raid by throwing out bubbles to buy the raid healers time.

I think Disc priest’s can work very well with other healers because they can help out without stepping on the other healers toes. In particular I like working with a druid as I think bubbles and HoTs are amazing together. Really though Disc priests work well with any other healer…except another disc priest. With another Disc priest it takes a bit more planning ahead, but can still work.

I still see some distrust of a Disc priests abilities on my server, but it has lessened. In trade the other day there was a person insisting that every bad priest he’d ever had in a pug was a Disc. He also insisted that Disc was bad at healing 5 mans. Funny….that is how I prefer to spec for 5s.

Nice article. I’ve just started raiding current content (10 man ICC last night) as a disc priest, and I had good success in a “middle” role (healing off tank and covering the raid when possible). I just wanted to say that the tip about using binding heal to heal raid members is a really good idea. I was getting annoyed that I would lose my grace stack any time I had to heal anybody other than the tank.

I love the idea of being locked into one or two tanks and healing them nearly exclusively? Why? Because that’s what made me love healing to begin with. I fell in love with my Priest, really, during the Nefarian fight, healer rotations and 5SR included. I was freaking good at keeping that man alive with my shields and heals. I didn’t have to worry about keeping the raid alive because I knew my team had that one covered.

I haven’t been able to really try out the new disc, though, so maybe I’m talking out of my butt. I hope to have my Priest be my main in Cat when I finally get back into some semblance of the raid game, and we’ll see if my fond memories of 40-manning raids still hold true. I still like it in BGs, though, so there’s hope.
.-= Professor Beej´s last blog ..How I Shortlisted John Scalzi as a New Favorite Author =-.

I think the idea that any healer is just a “fill in the blank” is shortsided and naive. “We have to have so and so in our raid” is a first sign of fail in my mind.

Especially with ten man. I’ve seen good pally’s raid heal ten man content just fine (they might have been sweating bullets, but they did the job.) I’ve tanked heal heroic 10-anub on my holy priest with a druid as partner earning the insanity title and repeated the performance taking off tank with a shaman on main tank me on off-tank and both of us looking out for the frigid debuff. In our 25 mans, the disc priest in our 25 mans is often assigned to raid shield the party while I or a shaman help with tanks on things like marrogar or any of the other many bosses where the shields could save the life of bad luck or bad awareness.

A good healer can handle any situation and shine, within reason, and while certain class/specs can more easily handle certain assignments, I’ve seen way too many people quit at things from 5 -mans to 25-mans because they lacked skill, imagination, knowledge, or the desire to make due with the toon’s that are available and players who have or could have the skill if they tried.

I’m not advocating that we stick druids and holy priests on main tanks and pally’s and disc on raids when you have choices. Raids and toons should lead with their strengths, and improve on them, but I think healing overall is in a really good place that gives tons of alternatives to healers and raid leadership.

I see druid HOT spamming across the raid & disc bubble spamming across the raid as very similar. Neither is really the big AOE healing of Holy priests & resto shaman. However, having a disc spec around is good for those situational fights. Raid bubble spam seems to work okay situationally, but since the disc priest also works well as a tank healer, they should be more flexible… kinda like how resto druids should be able to either tank or raid heal as needed.
.-= Lissanna´s last blog ..New ICC wing (Plagueworks) unlocks this week! =-.

bubble people who are either about to take damage, or are taking damage ( for instance that blood mark on Saurfang, people boned on marrowgar, people who are running out of DnDon lady D, etc) Penance tanks to proc divine aegis in adition to a powerword shield (plus its a very strong heal) bounce prayer of mending, renew to touch up someone who might not be at full health but not dangerously low and/or lifetapping warlocks, binding heal when I’m taking damage ( and it also procs divine aegis), prayer of healing (that also procs divine aegis) when all goes to hell and lost of AoE healing is needed and bubble spam is not enough, flashheal to fill in the gaps I love playing discipline 🙂 I tried holy after healing as disc for a while and its just not the same, I feel like I don’t have enough tools at my disposal as holy :/

I have just begun to play my priest as Disc. She has been a SP but some recent runs have really opened my eyes to how much fun Disc can be. I was saving up badges to get another of the T9 for my ( 4 peice bonus) shadow set but I ran so much over the weekend I am just a few short of buying 4 T9 for my healing. I am leaning strongly in that direction.
.-= Cozmo D´s last blog ..Revenge is sweet, or is it? =-.

I’m happiest when I can do both raid and tank heal. I usually assign myself to our DK tank cause I have a good feel for how much I can ignore him to raid heal. If u have 2 Pallies for a 25man then being a switch healer is a great roll for a Disc Priest.

I agree random bubbling is bad but having bubbles available for things like Spikes on Marogar and Koblol fires on Heroic Beasts is just priceless.

I also tend to see Disc as a support healer and not a tank healer. If I am lacking Holy Paladins in a raid I’ll assign myself to a tank and I can manage it but a Disc Priest cannot match the single-target throughput of a good Holy Paladin.

On most ‘normal’ fights as Disc I use PW:S and Penance to triage those who are hit hard and may otherwise die in the next couple GCDs. Otherwise I toss out some shields as I see fit, help with burst damage on tanks, and will toss heals on the tank from time-to-time to help by procing Inspiration.

Disc Priests lack the raw single-target thoughput of a paladin and the raw raid throughput of a Holy Priest, but they are damn good at saving people that would have otherwise died. Because I tend toward being the “oh shit” utility healer I am a bit unconventional and gear primarily spellpower + haste rather than spellpower + crit which would provide superior throughput.

In 25 man raids, I either focus solely on tank healing if I’m healing the MT, or I can assist with renew and shields if I’m healing an OT that is taking less damage. I prefer being locked onto two targets and trusting the raid healers to do their best, but I recognize my duty as a support healer when I’m healing the safest tank and I try to help out other healers.

I think the flexibility of a discipline priest really shines (and causes panic attacks) when I am two-healing 10 man content. I run with a Holy Paladin and he handles the tanks while I support the tanks and manage the raid. In ICC 10, it can get pretty stressful. The tanks still need a lot of healing, and then there’s the raid…

Mana conservation is more important when there’s only two of us. Prayer of Mending, Renew, and Binding Heal become vital for maintaining the raid and myself. I can’t die or go oom, because there is no healer to pick up the slack. Shields are expensive and I have to pick and choose which targets need it most and which ones a renew will secure until I can cast PoH or Flash Heal. I find I also try to reserve Penance for the tank. I don’t risk using it on a raid member because, more often than not, it won’t be ready just as I need it for the tank.

It’s rewarding and a bit of an adrenaline rush because it pushes us to the extremes and demands that we know our class and use our arsenal appropriately.

Shielding raiders who take damage to help prevent their death from followup damage is your bread and butter, but as you learn the fights you can partially shut down all the other raid healers by preventing the damage before they get a chance to heal it.

If you are trying to shield the entire raid all the time, you are either bored or silly.

Saying discipline can’t raid heal is about as naive as saying its for PvP only.

I am just now getting into healing on my Disc Priest alt and really have enjoyed this blog to give me some information from the other side of the fence (My main is a Prot Warrior).

I wanted to comment on the spam pw:s. Granted this is kind of a “Im a noob to healing” comment and this is what has worked for me. I generally only spam pw:s on fights that I know people are going to be taking damage. Like in PoS with Ick & Krick when the bombs are exploding.

I can easily run around avoiding the bombs putting bubbles and renew on everyone and stop in a clear spot to throw a big heal on the tank. Ideally they would avoid the bombs and I wouldn’t have to heal them through it. Bubbling just incase seems like the avoidance healing that is intended for a Disc Priest. I had a similar experience the other day on Gormok where he does the aoe damage on the melee. I bubble all the melee every so often when I know he is going to stomp to try to avoid some of the damage.

I guess my point is that I don’t really see how a Disc is only a tank healer. I see us too versitile to help prevent damage to the raid. Is the reason that Disc priest were considered more “tank healers” for fights like Patchwerk where the damage was so intense you had to have one dedicated healer on each tank keeping them alive. But then wouldn’t any healer be required. Just being able to heal.

I guess i have some more reading to do on “tank healing”.
Thanks for your blog.

I feel as a disc priest you usually have the most fun job in a raid. I kinda resent the -hey you disc go MT heal!- idea as i feel keeping them up is horribly boring and there is no better person for that then a pally with those insane HL crits.

Ofc my main job is to assist the raid. I tend to help MT healers first with keeping PWS up on them always and tossing a super fast GHeal on them (ye i do like gheal still) when you see theyre low.

My best fight as a disc healer atm is Jaraxus. A good disc healer can make this fight soo much easier. Shielding Pain Spikes, silly melee that refuses to move from infernals, tanks when they are tanking and not and people with legion flames will really give me the feeling that im saving the raid instead of the tedious job of raid healing. Spamming rejuv/coh/ch is a challenge for some but i prefer to be clever about my heals. Disc is awesome for that !

Also, Matt mentioned that you can waste a lot of mana as disc and this is certainly true. However with the current game i cant imagine anyone having mana issues unless youre really neglegent with spamming and then no spec in the world will help you.

It’s debatable? Hardly. There’s no class (I repeat: “no class”) that can do what disc does in a raid healing environment. What’s that? They prevent damage. No one else does it. And it is an extremely viable tactic is certain situations. It’s not debatable.

Predictable raid-wide damage? It’s not debatable. You spam shield people. They take damage. A lot of it is absorbed. In many situations, that’s better than healing after-the fact, because all of the theoretical healing done is immediate. You don’t have to wait for the heal to resolve. You don’t have to wait for the priest to react. You choose who to put the shield on, and don’t have to worry about whose in range for CoH. You don’t have to wait for POH to finish casting. Etc.

depends on what you are healing. there are fights I just flat out do holy. festergut, h twins. and others I do disc for a variety of reasons, like saurfang and heroic beasts and most of all heroic anub.

its in the way you use it. lets start basic. H beasts. pre shield melee for stomp spam tanks, ok now we are into phase two, either spam heal the dread tank for the way we do it, and make some saves with shield. or if things are cozy which they are usually, I can pick up slack spot heal as need be and pre shield trouble areas.

saurfang is obvious.

festergut I’m 100 percent on the current tank. spamming the hell out of him.

but yeah there are fights i dont feel like switching between, due to raid makeup I may be holy or disc for. and meh if the tank is in no real danger. I’ll start preshielding the raid. remember, they get back runic power, energy, rage, mana when the shield is absorbed. and it still comes back in bucketloads if the damage all hits at once.

“As I pointed out above, I’m not a big fan of the “bubble spam”. Sure it may look good on World of Logs or the estimated “absorption meter”, but I think it’s impractical. I’m not in a raid to top a meter, I’m there to keep the whole raid alive.”

Sure, nobody should be into healing to top the meters (and usually each class seems to have encounters where the other equally geared classes just don’t have a chance to beat them), but shielding is too important and strong to not sometimes mass spam it. There just are situations where you want to shield a whole group of people or even the whole raid (twins). And as long as you can see results in the meter, there *was* damage absorbed, wasn’t it? Oh, and another point: As long as I didn’t run OOM or had to ask for a innervate and nobody died, I did my job, even if everybody comes out of the fight with two bubbles around them 🙂
.-= Baraan´s last blog ..Ordnung muss sein — im Inventar =-.

I am a aoe-disc priest. I dont think that disc should be labeled the “single target priest”
disc is actually the utility priest. We can switch from tank healing to aoe healing on the fly. And even with enough stacks of DA and a bubble, we could help out the aoe healers a little.

and my advice to the disc bubble spammers is to stop using pw:s as a heal, but as something that allows you to be proactive in healing. Either by bubbling people that are going to take the damage now, or those who will be taking damage, like having all of the melee bubble before a stomp during icehowl = sexy.

and to those questioning the bubble spam…. if it’s done efficiently, it’s a close to 9-10k HPS process that not only takes a huge amount of pressure off the other healers, but could save people’s lives…. so why not do it?

@tehseeker: Agreed. I’ve been practicing and playing the bubble spam priest. I start hitting bubbles on all the soft targets (healers, or melee) when I notice a special ability coming up within a few seconds even if they’re at full health.

Think of it more as a temporary extension of health as opposed to actual bonafide healing.

Saying a disc priest should not spam bubbles are as silly as telling other healers not to overheal. Shure you should learn the fight and when to do what specially to conserv mana. As disc i seldome have mana problems anyway and if we can beat a new fight cuz i “spam” thats only cool.

Top healmeaters? are we kidding our self that others than disc priests have addons to see recount?

To any new disc priest i would say spam your bubbles as long as you dont run out of mana, spam to make ppl feel safe the rogue might push his dps a little more cuz he has a bubble. Spam to keep your speedbuff up so your heals are fast when needed. Spam to help other raidhealers utilize 5sec rules.

And get a good absorbe addon for recount so you can spam raid in puggs to show all numbnutts that think disc suck what we are realy capable off.

But hey lern the fights too so you know when it is realy important to bobble too and dont blow your mana if there is even a risk of that.

I’ve only taken one shot on him so far, on 25. we are waiting till the rest of 10 groups get him down this weekend.

From what i’ve seen, depending on raid makeup, I really thing thats a holy fight. just alot of continuing raid damgage, nothing life ending unless not kept up with. imo isnt disc’s strong point but is holy.

I think Disc priests can make good raid healers but they should have a very specific role. PW:S tanks and throw the Prayer of Mending around, and then focus on people that are being hit by a particular attack that doesn’t hit tanks.

I kinda agree on holy/disc but for diffrent reasons. Its hard to keepgear enc and gemmed to proffit both. I have both specs tho as we have many pallys and sometimes holy complement other healers better.

I dont see how a disc priest cant be the most important healer of toc tho, if you just want tosave ppl from near death exp you can go as shadow instead and throw a heal here and there or do a hymn.

In toc all first bosses benefit from bubbling all as all are most likely going to take dmg during fight, silence, snobolds, fires, debuffs and pushback.
Twins ppl get hit by balls over and over.. Perfect disc fight as it is not all att same time and you get mana back.
Factionheroes everyone take dmg and benefit from bubbles, however dispelling takes prio.
Jarax… Also likely all take dmg during fight and benefit alot from bubble also penance is awsome to debuff ppl in that fight.
Anub.. Well in p1 i might agree with you (maby use it for manaregen) but in the other phases you are just as important as any other healer im asuming you are on raid. Almost everyone will get agro/dmg and can use your shield. In p3 im hard pressed to see a better healing class as the goal is to keep all as low on life as possible but still alive. Healers like druids and have a hard time keeping ppl below 30% and our shields rock here.

All in all I think you as disc have as much chanse to shine and be awsome as any other healer that rock att his class, even if recount dont show it 🙂

Btw i think it is hard keeping good gear for 2 priest tallents i do however think you learn alot from playing diffrent classes.I still try to play my main most and studdy it most (rogue).

I have played Disc since the early days of WoW with occasional breaks with Shadow. I’ve very recently switched to Holy and I’m loving it but I really miss Disc. It’s always been a little misunderstood(like the tanks I had at the beginning of WotLK bitching about all the bubbles) but very powerful. I healed Naxx with it without problem. I guess it’s all in the comfort level of your spec and your play style. For example: I can’t play a fury warrior to save my life but I love prot.

Guess this kind of thing is what dual-spec was made for, right?
.-= Wraithann´s last blog ..174 to 96 =-.

Trackbacks

[…] The Issue with Discipline Raid Healing–I haven’t seen it (other than standing around between mob packs and the disc priest decides bubbling the entire raid will lighten his day); however, I was intrigued to read a bit about stretching the tree. I don’t think it’s a viable solution for most raiding situations, but experimenting with your class is the spice of WoW. […]

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About me

My name is Matticus and this is my World of Warcraft blog. Here you can read about my thoughts regarding healing as a priest. As a former guild master, I also write about guild and raid related topics. The blog has expanded to include thoughts from other regular contributors. The aim of this blog is to help you grow and improve. My unending goal is to have something relevant and useful in every post. or more, you can check out my columns on Blizzard Watch. Visit theGuildmasters to talk shop with other GMs, raid leaders, and officers. My current guild is on Kel'Thuzad US.